February, 2018

Get 10% off data visualization for data scientists one day course

February 26, 2018

Take your career up a notch with our new data visualization course.

For those working with data, the demand for visualisation skills in the last five years has grown by a startling 2574%, according to Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based startup.

Our trainer, Andy Pemberton, trains everyone from the United Nations to the European Central Bank to the European Commission on how to show their data off in the best possible way.

Through a series of discussions and interactive exercises, he’ll help you develop new capabilities and a better approach to data visualisation.

He will show you how to turn raw data into visualisations that are impactful, simple and persuasive. He will also provide you with a set of tools to help you understand your audience, your message and your data, as well as demonstrating which charts work best, how to prep data for visualisation and what data visualisation success looks like.

Join Andy for one intense day that will elevate your reports and decks from good to the best your board have seen.

We’ll meet on April 5 2008 at one of the world’s finest universities, University College London, for an action packed day of principles and practical workshops. We’ve even got a healthy lunch covered – all you have to do is bring yourself, your laptop, and your drive.

Full details are here.

What others have said:

“Thanks for the very informative course yesterday. The phrase ‘no title, no infographic’ is now printed and blue tacked to the cupboard behind my desk.” Nic Benton, ICMM

“A big big thank you for the workshop yesterday –I’m so thrilled I went along, and I’ve already started thinking about how to do what I do better.” Leonie Le Borgne, Action Against Hunger

‘Thanks for the great training. It was really good. I am sure I will now be able to present my plans.’” Christine Bryan, European Central Bank

More comments here.

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Perfect your data visualization with this acclaimed one day course

February 26, 2018

Take your career up a notch with our new data visualization course.

For those working with data, the demand for visualisation skills in the last five years has grown by a startling 2574%, according to Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based startup.

Our trainer, Andy Pemberton, trains everyone from the United Nations to the European Central Bank to the European Commission on how to show their data off in the best possible way.

Through a series of discussions and interactive exercises, he’ll help you develop new capabilities and a better approach to data visualisation.

Join Andy for one intense day that will elevate your reports and decks from good to the best your board have seen.

Full details are here.

What others have said:

“Thanks for the very informative course yesterday. The phrase ‘no title, no infographic’ is now printed and blue tacked to the cupboard behind my desk.” Nic Benton, ICMM

‘Thanks for the great training. It was really good. I am sure I will now be able to present my plans.’” Christine Bryan, European Central Bank

More comments here.

Contact Andy@furthr.co.uk

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Retraining will best ease loss of jobs caused by automation

February 22, 2018

Machines will put folks out of work. Think tank ITIF has ideas for easing the shock.
Embrace tech: Contra to suggestions to slow job erosion via, say, robo-taxes, ITIF urges uptake of automation to boost productivity, and helping those put out of jobs.
Retrain, don’t support: Rather than paying out universal basic income, says ITIF, re-educating workers and finding them new jobs could keep the economy strong.
Automation could be a net benefit to society. Better to focus on helping the displaced, says ITIF, rather slowing the whole economy to save jobs.

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In the US there are more Opioid overdoses than doctors who can help

February 22, 2018

In several states, deaths from opioid overdoses outnumber doctors who are able to provide buprenorphine, a drug that helps treat addiction, according to a new Avalere analysis.

Nationally, there’s an average of 1.6 opioid overdose deaths per provider certified to prescribe buprenorphine.

Why it matters: This is a case for expanding “scope of practice” laws — allowing more nurses and physicians’ assistants to prescribe buprenorphine to help get the epidemic under control — reports Axios’ Caitlin Owens.

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Suicide attempts are up in Puerto Rico

February 22, 2018

The number of hotline calls reporting suicide attempts in Puerto Rico nearly tripled after Hurricane Maria hit the region last September.

The suicide rate is now the highest it’s been in four years, following a historic low in 2016, according to data from Puerto Rico’s Department of Health.

It will take Puerto Rico years to fully recover from the devastation of Hurricane Maria — it’s already taken several months just to restore power and provide clean water to most of the island.

Julio Santana Mariño, a psychology professor at Universidad Carlos Albizu, told Vox, “when you add the stress of more than five months without power, without food, living patterns change … it makes it harder for people to manage daily life.”

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The United States has become “the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into,” according to a study in Health Affairs

February 18, 2018

The United States has become “the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into,” according to a study in Health Affairs.

Mortality in the US has been higher than in peer nations since the 1980s.

From 2001 to 2010 the risk of death in the US was 76 percent greater for infants and 57 percent greater for children ages 1–19.

During this decade, children ages 15–19 were eighty-two times more likely to die from gun homicide in the US.

Over the fifty-year study period, the lagging US performance amounted to over 600,000 excess deaths.

Policy interventions should focus on infants and on children ages 15–19, the two age groups with the greatest disparities, by addressing perinatal causes of death, automobile accidents, and assaults by firearm. [Chart source: Wikipedia Commons] Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians perfectly corroborates contents of the “Steele dossier”

February 18, 2018

Here’s a key takeaway from yesterday’s FT:

“Mr Mueller’s report hints at more dramatic possibilities by corroborating contents of the “Steele dossier”, which was compiled in mid-2016 by the former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele — long before the US intelligence agencies warned of Russian interference.

Mr Steele, who is in hiding, alleged that the Russians were using “active measures” to support the campaigns of Mr Trump, Bernie Sanders, the Democratic runner-up to Hillary Clinton, and Jill Stein, the Green party nominee. Mr Mueller’s indictment confirms that account.

Mr Steele also claimed the Russians were blackmailing Mr Trump with financial and sexual “kompromat” — compromising material.”

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That UK earthquake in full

February 17, 2018

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How to influence an election: a breakdown of Russia’s content strategy to hijack the US election of 2016

February 16, 2018

So I just read Robert Mueller’s entire 36 page indictment of 13 Russians for hacking the US election.

It’s pretty detailed and supplies a decent undersanding of how to manage your content marketing – Putin style.

Content marketing the Russian way

The Internet Research Agency used a few key strategies. Namely:

They ran multiple Twitter accounts, often run by bots, each linking to an account run by a real life troll.
They ran multiple group pages on Facebook and Instagram grouped around geography or a theme
They contacted and sometimes paid social media influencers
They paid for political ads to promote a campaign or rally
They paid folks to promote their posts or help organise events

Running on a monthly budget of $1.25m, their organisation broke down into a few key departments:

Graphics
Data analysis
SEO
IT
Finance

Here’s a five step guide to content marketing the Russian way.

They tracked social media groups

The IRA tracked other politically motivated social media group’s size, frequency of content, level of audience engagement, average number of comments and responses. The goal was to collect information on US politics and to better target their campaigns. They also contacted administrators of large social media groups to advertise their rallies.

They developed fictitious personas and fake accounts to promote posts

The IRA also used multiple social media accounts to support and engage with their own tweets. The strategy can be viewed as an attempt to conjure the “majority allusion”: each time they ran a main account from which to post information and auxillary accounts to promote that main account via links and reposts.

They contacted US political activists/ influencers

The IRA reached out to US activists to promote their tweets. Sometimes they offered to pay them to organise rallies. Sometimes activists would suggest where the IRA should focus their attention. (eg on “Purple states”).

They made a content calendar

The IRA made content based on US holidays. They also optimized their text and graphics for better engagement. Posts had to appear “authentic”. They used election-related hashtags such as #Trump Train and #MAGA etc

They created thematic groups

Pages on social media sites Facebook and Instagram were grouped around issues such as immigration or geographic regions. IRA bought ads on Facebook to promote these groups.

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For publishers, the vast majority of traffic growth now comes from Google

February 15, 2018

According to new data from Chartbeat, the vast majority of traffic growth publishers are seeing from platforms is now coming from Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) — or fast-loading mobile article pages on Google Search and Google News.

Why it matters: As Facebook pulls back from publisher traffic referrals in the News Feed, Google General Counsel Kent Walker says Google is “doubling down” on news, specifically using Google AMP. The data from Chartbeat shows it’s working. (Axios).

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